Torrentz2 Suffers Prolonged ‘Downtime’ and Returns a 503 Error

[Anna Kushina (櫛名アンナ)]

The popular torrent meta-search engine Torrentz2 is suffering some technical problems, it seems. For more than a day the site has been returning a "503 Service Unavailable" error which indicates that the server is overloaded, possibly due to a DDoS attack.

With millions of regular visitors, Torrentz2 is without a doubt the most popular torrent meta-search engine on the Internet.

The site took this spot from the original Torrentz site, which shut down unexpectedly during the summer of 2016.

Since then, not much has changed. The site has continued to operate quietly like its predecessor by indexing and linking to dozens of millions of links on external torrent sites.

Torrentz2’s Domain Issues

Earlier this year the site suffered a major setback. In June, the official Torrentz2.eu domain name was suspended by the EURid registry, an action that was taken following an order from the Belgian Public Prosecutor in Brussels.

Torrentz2 swiftly responded and moved to Torrentz2.is, while adding several backup domains such as Torrentz.pl and Torrentsmirror.com. While these domains still work fine, torrents are hard to find at the moment.

503 Service Unavailable

For more than a day, Torrentz2 has been returning a “503 Service Unavailable” error, as shown in the screenshot below.

https://torrentfreak.com/images/torrentz2-503.jpg

“503 Service Unavailable” is an HTTP status code that typically indicates that the server of a website is overloaded. This is often a temporary issue but, in this case, it’s taking unusually long.

TorrentFreak reached out to the operator of Torrentz2 to ask whether the problem will be resolved in the near future, but we have yet to hear back.

Without an official comment, we can only speculate as to the reason for the ‘downtime’. It seems likely, however, that it is of a technical nature. That could include DDoS attacks, which are not uncommon for torrent sites.

Torrentz2 uses Cloudflare, which generally protects servers from DDoS attacks. However, if attackers know the origin IP-address, they can bypass that protection layer.

There doesn’t appear to be a connection to the domain issues from earlier this year, which appeared to be linked to Hollywood. Torrentz2’s main .is domain, which is managed by Iceland’s ISNIC registry, is functioning properly.

Source: Torrentfreak.com